Tuesday, September 17

Feinstein wants to limit who can be a journalist

I’VE HAD IT UP TO HERE: U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., says citizen journalists and bloggers should not be covered by a federal shield law.

By Eric Boehm | Watchdog.org

The most recent congressional threat to the free press in the United States comes from California Democrat U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

In a proposed amendment to a media shield law being considered by Congress, Feinstein writes that only paid journalists should be given protections from prosecution for what they say or write. The language in her proposal is raising concerns from First Amendment advocates because it seems to leave out bloggers and other nontraditional forms of journalism that have proliferated in recent years thanks to the Internet.

I don’t know which one Dianne Feinstein is and it doesn’t really matter. The end result is a woman hell bent on curtailing our freedom and/or eroding our traditional values. Consider the following:

Not so long ago, if you mentioned the word “journalist” to someone, they would probably get a picture in their mind that would look something like this...

...and, if you were to mention the word “marriage”, they would most likely conjure up an image that looks like this...

...Nothing surprising here, these are both traditional, stereotypical images. But things change, and Dianne wants us to believe that marriage can now also look like this...

...”Hey”, we’re told, “things change. Deal with it.” That’s what Ms. Feinstein and her buddies want us to accept. “Quit living in the past. Change is inevitable.” they say. Alright, alright. Then how come Dianne’s idea of a journalist is still this?

Bloggers aren’t real journalists, she says. Someone needs to be a salaried employee of an established media organization in order to qualify as a journalist, she says.

Now wait a minute, Dianne. Aren’t you and your buddies the ones who say they favor change. Things have changed alot since the days when the newspapers and three television networks were the dominant sources of news. The new millennium has produced a new breed of journalists, aka bloggers that need and deserve the same protections enjoyed by traditional journalists, maybe even more so. Obviously, an individual is more vulnerable to those who mean harm, than a large news corporation.

In the early days of our country, newspapers were started by individuals or groups of individuals that saw a need for them. Maybe a town had no newspaper, or the existing paper(s) were biased in one way or another and didn’t speak for a substantial portion of the population. It’s the same way with blogging today. Yes, it’s relatively new, yes there inexperienced people writing (including me), but that’s the beauty of it. Most bloggers are totally independent, and the sheer number of them guarantees that the dissemination of news can never be restricted or controlled by one organization or political party.

Blogging today is still in its infancy, about where newspapers were at the time our constitution was written. If our founding fathers felt it was necessary to qualify someone as a “real” journalist before affording him or her any protection of free speech, they probably would have included something regarding that, or at least we would have heard about debates among them concerning it. It wasn’t necessary then, and it is not necessary now. The true spirit of this nation includes affording ALL people the SAME PROTECTION. Free speech is a right, not a privilege, which means Dianne, you can't take it away from us, as much as you'd like to.